After Provoking the Crazy Overpowered Protagonist, the Vicious Bottom’s Plans Failed - Chapter 5

Huo Yan’s gaze fell upon the massive circular stone slab, and the answer became self-evident. Xian Yuzhu’s face turned pale instantly. On a stone surface this hard, let alone half a day, even half an incense stick’s worth of time would leave the delicate knees of the Yuxian Sect’s Young Sect Leader with frightening bruises. For someone as afraid of pain as Xian Yuzhu, this was absolutely unacceptable.

“I am telling you, there are no outsiders here. You do not need to be so serious,” Xian Yuzhu said, suppressing his annoyance as he tried to use logic to persuade Huo Yan. “Senior Brother, my hands still hurt right now.”

He held out his palms toward the man. The original swelling had subsided thanks to the Jade Scar Ointment, leaving only a faint shade of pink.

“The sect rules cannot be violated. Do not make me angry,” Huo Yan replied. He knew the youth was lying, so he did not even look at the offered hands. He added indifferently, “Furthermore, kneeling requires your legs. What does that have to do with your hands?”

“Huo Yan!”

Seeing that Huo Yan was immune to both soft pleas and hard threats, Xian Yuzhu was so angry that his fur virtually stood on end. He lost all patience. “How can a person be as rigid as you?”

In the past, he had caused trouble frequently, but because he relied on his father and the elders for support, the consequences were always loud but harmless. Since childhood, the most he had ever faced was being confined to his room for three to five days. Even then, the Sect Leader would worry that his son might be bored and would often secretly send magical artifacts to keep him entertained. Xian Yuzhu never imagined that after twenty years of acting like a local tyrant, he would finally meet his match in Huo Yan.

Huo Yan gave a cold snort. “Xian Yuzhu.” He frowned, forcibly suppressing his temper. “As the Young Sect Leader of a sect, you cannot always be this willful. Do you not know?”

Looking at Yuzhu, who was completely ignorant of the underlying situation, Huo Yan abruptly stopped himself from saying more. He had promised the Master that he would not speak of it.

Xian Yuzhu had grown up without a mother. His father and elders had pampered him excessively, and his fellow disciples pursued him fanatically. Consequently, he was now simple and foolish, arrogant and conceited. He was entirely unable to hear the warning in the other man’s voice.

“Humph, so you finally realize that I am the Young Sect Leader?”

He spoke with a sarcastic tone that would usually invite a beating. However, because Xian Yuzhu was small and delicate, his effort to stand on his tiptoes to get close to Huo Yan’s face made him look like a fox spirit with its tail held high. He was the type of fool who simply could not read the mood.

“I thought that after my father entered seclusion, the Yuxian Sect became a place where only you, Chief Huo, had the final say.”

As the youth drew closer, the fragrance from his body flooded Huo Yan’s nose. Huo Yan felt an inexplicable heat rise in his body, and his expression gradually darkened.

“The Master gave orders before his seclusion that I am to look after you during these days.” He lifted the youth’s pointed chin. “I will give you three seconds to consider. The sect rules cannot be violated. If you are disobedient, do not blame your Senior Brother for treating you the way I treat other disciples.”

“Huo Yan, you, how can you be like this?”

Xian Yuzhu had originally intended to use his father’s name to intimidate Huo Yan, hoping the man would be sensible enough to excuse him. He had not expected a single sentence to provoke such anger. The man stood tall and broad, his dark eyes staring at the youth with an unreadable expression.

His thin lips moved slightly. “Three.”

Xian Yuzhu stamped his foot. “I do not want to! It was clearly that other person who was blind. Why is it my fault?”

Huo Yan’s brows drew lower. “Two.”

Xian Yuzhu’s face turned white. “The sect rules say one hour is acceptable, right? I beg of you, half a day is too long.”

“Xian Yuzhu,” Huo Yan said with a tone of slight disappointment. He stepped toward him with a posture that was clearly unfriendly.

Xian Yuzhu knew when to quit. Terrified by an imaginary phantom pain in his palms, he said hurriedly, “I understand! I understand! Half a day it is.”

With a loud thud, his knees hit the stone platform. This action felt as though his pride had been shattered into pieces, and his small face turned pale for a moment. Yet, he did not dare to cry out, though pitiable tears welled in his eyes.

You nuisance, just you wait, he thought. Wait until I find an opportunity to make you kneel until your own knees rot.

“I, I am kneeling now. You cannot hit me,” he said.

His voice was trembling, sounding very much like he was acting spoiled. He thought Huo Yan could not see him discreetly rubbing his legs. Huo Yan stared at him in silence. This was the first time he truly understood the meaning of a headache. Xian Yuzhu knew he had to kneel regardless, yet he insisted on acting out and causing a fuss, refusing to simply obey.

As Huo Yan thought about this, he walked to Xian Yuzhu’s side, lifted his robes, and knelt down properly. Compared to the crooked and reluctant Yuzhu, his back was perfectly straight and his face was calm.

Huo Yan was not a true gentleman, nor did he have the patience to educate someone else’s child. In his youth, his family had been wiped out and his parents had died tragically. He was forced to live among beggars and fight stray dogs for food. Before the age of fifteen, he grew up in a slum where he witnessed every kind of filth and darkness. Naturally, such an environment did not produce a pure or good person. Even after his luck changed and he entered the outer sect of Yuxian Sect, and later became a personal disciple after his talent awakened, Huo Yan did not change. At his core, he remained a paranoid and cold-blooded individual.

Compared to others, Huo Yan was simply better at pretending. On the surface, he was brilliant and selfless, a genius Chief Disciple praised by all the elders. In reality, he was vindictive and cunning. He had repaid every humiliation he suffered in the outer sect tenfold. He never even had to use his own hands to ensure those who had mocked him ended up dead, crippled, or barely clinging to life. Huo Yan did not kill them outright. He wanted them to watch with their own eyes as he defied fate and ascended to the pinnacle of cultivation.

Everything had gone according to his plan. People feared him, revered him, and stayed away from him. Only one person was an exception, and that was Xian Yuzhu. His Little Junior Brother was a beautiful and shallow fool, yet he was also the most popular person in the sect. Whenever he appeared, other cultivators swarmed him like dogs to meat, competing to be his footstool. Even being whipped by him was something they would brag about constantly.

Previously, Huo Yan had only watched coldly. However, Xian Yuzhu clearly could not accept that there was someone in the sect who did not chase after him like a dog. Whether intentionally or not, Xian Yuzhu began to appear before Huo Yan constantly. Huo Yan originally did not care, thinking that once Xian Yuzhu became bored, he would stop annoying him. But one should never make such a vow. By the time Huo Yan realized it, his attention had already been captured.

Huo Yan was meticulous. He quickly realized that for a person like Xian Yuzhu, the more you fawned over him, the less he would value you. One had to do the opposite. When everyone else was praising him, only Huo Yan remained indifferent or even cold. Only then would Xian Yuzhu become curious.

The facts proved that Huo Yan had not miscalculated. As excellent and vain as Yuzhu was, he could not endure someone in the sect treating him coldly. Huo Yan glanced sideways at the youth’s exquisite profile and noticed that Xian Yuzhu’s eyelids were drooping as he mumbled something silently. Judging by the shape of his lips, he was cursing him.

Huo Yan laughed inwardly, finding Xian Yuzhu increasingly interesting. He knew that with Xian Yuzhu’s temper, the boy would not let today’s matter go easily. He looked forward to seeing what foolish revenge his Little Junior Brother would plot. Xian Yuzhu was not a reasonable person. Even if he knew Huo Yan had punished him to clean up his mess, so what? In the eyes of the extremely self-centered and pampered Young Sect Leader, he likely only saw how Huo Yan had struck him without mercy, how he remained unmoved by his tears, and how he had mocked his prideful beauty.

It was truly pitiable. Being as stupid as he was, falling into the hands of a hypocrite like Huo Yan was only a matter of time.

“Yuzhu,” Huo Yan said, calmly suppressing the morbid and twisted emotions in his eyes. He glanced at the youth beside him, whose eyelids were fluttering with sleepiness, and commanded, “Correct your posture. Do not let your Senior Brother say it a second time.”